


walk with me in hell

by Duckyboos



Series: Profound Meetings [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Castiel's True Form (Supernatural), Dean Winchester in Hell, Demons, Episode: s04e01 Lazarus Rising, Hell, M/M, Winged Castiel (Supernatural), Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25266979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duckyboos/pseuds/Duckyboos
Summary: The day the angel turns up, all hell breaks loose. Literally.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Profound Meetings [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820488
Comments: 25
Kudos: 228





	walk with me in hell

**Author's Note:**

> This week I challenged myself to write a canon meet-cute. 
> 
> I think out of the works I have planned for this series (twelve so far) this is the one I'm most nervous about posting. It's also a bit longer than the 1000 words I was aiming for, but here we are! 
> 
> Next week is a mafia au (back to normal, hah)

Hell is chaos.

It’s blood and agony and misery in every sadistic second that passes. 

Hell is powered by horror. Suffering serves as convertible energy. Souls are recycled, tortured again and again.

Every day Dean gets ripped apart and rebuilt anew to suffer the same fate until the end of time. 

Hell is eternal and so is the torment Dean suffers at the skilled hands of Alastair. 

Thirty years down and Dean can’t take it anymore. Physically or mentally. He says yes to Alastair right as an ethereal voice splinters into his head like rays of light, screaming no. 

That voice gets stronger and stronger as the days pass in a blur of blood and guts, of brimstone and death. Dean tortures sobbing, wrecked, messes of souls, tears them to shreds with the gnarly serrated blade Alastair gives to him when he sees Dean’s propensity for violence. 

The voice tells him it’s an angel of the Lord named Castiel and that it’s coming for him.

Which is how he knows it’s another one of Alastair’s mindfucks.

He doesn't allow himself to feel hope; hell is a hopeless place. 

***

There are occasions where Dean fights back. He _is_ a Winchester, and there's no way after all he's endured that he's not gonna stab a demon or two whilst he's down here. Alastair doesn’t care; he just laughs with that horrible rasping scrape, the one that’s like sandpaper on Dean’s exposed nerves. 

The angel Castiel tells him it's coming, that it'll be there with Dean soon. 

Dean rips the innards out of a woman condemned to hell for killing her kids, and things don’t seem as black and white as they used to. Now there are shades of red too.

***

The day the angel turns up, all hell breaks loose. Literally. 

Dean holds his own, bloodied fingers slipping on the blade Alastair handed him years ago. He swings at any demon that comes within a few feet of him, but most of them are busy running away or attacking the invisible force that’s descended from the heavens.

He can still only hear the angel, can't see it. Even when it’s supposedly right in front of him, all he hears is that fucking voice begging Dean to come to it.

"How do I know you're not another trick?" Dean grates out, his own voice thick and caught in his throat from disuse. There’s a heavy, burning sensation on his left deltoid. It doesn’t hurt enough to make Dean stop what he’s doing - he’s endured pain a million times worse - but it does slow him just a smidge. 

"You don't," Castiel intones with a gravitas that forces Dean to pay attention, even amongst this insane melee of writhing bodies and viscera, "But you need to trust me." 

" _Trust you_?" Dean snarks, slicing into another demon, slashing his throat, "Buddy, this is hell. The last guy who told me to trust him had me strung up on a rack for decades."

The arterial spray shoots upwards, catching on a snag mid-air, and it's then that Dean sees it. The pointed tip of a wing. Like an actual _wing_. Slick with the blood that makes it visible.

"Holy…”

_"Dean."_

He grapples another demon from the fray, holds the squirming body against his own, aims its neck right where he thinks the angel is, slashes across the jugular vein and carotid arteries. 

Blood spurts onto a skeletal shin, drips down a bony ankle at Dean’s eye line. Aren’t angels supposed to be cute and chubby? This one is less Christmas tree topper and more nightmare fuel.

Of course, that’s a relative concept in hell.

"I can't leave here without you," Castiel tells him, urgent, “You have to come with me now, Dean.”

What the hell - it literally cannot get any worse, so lump in his throat, the coppery-scented tang of blood in his nostrils, Dean nods, says, "Yeah, _yes_. Okay, Cas."

The burning pain in his shoulder intensifies, skin sizzling and then everything goes black. 

***

After Dean crawls out of his own grave - and yeah, now he gets why season six of Buffy was such an emo-fest (even though she went to a _very_ different place) - there are no voices in his head other than his own.

It’s too quiet, too clean. There’s no sulfur and screaming, just the scent of ozone, the sound of birds and cicadas chirping. 

His gravesite looks like a bomb blast.

He doesn't remember how he got out of Hell. He doesn’t yet remember his time there.

He gets to a truck stop, gulps down a shitload of water. 

The date is September 18th. There’s a weird mark on his left deltoid.

He grabs some supplies, along with an old favorite. 

Then it’s no longer quiet. 

Static on the TV, the radio.

Glass explodes.

The noise, _fuck_.

***

He finds Bobby, his brother. Goes through the whole rigmarole with each of them. 

Yes, it’s really him, back from hell. No, he doesn’t know how. 

Though it feels like he should. 

*** 

Things start coming back to him in bits and broken pieces. Screams of agony, ceaseless torment.

***

The pretty psychic Pamela gets her eyes burned out by something called Castiel. 

***

The demons don’t know who did it either. They’re scared.

They’re not the only ones.

***

In the hotel, more high pitched ringing, TV static. More glass explodes.

***

Bobby and Dean use up three spray cans worth of paint warding a barn in Pontiac, Illinois.

***

"I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition."

No. That can’t be right. Dean’s memories are hazy, starting to come back to him in painful shards that claw jaggedly at his insides, but he’d recognize this guy, right? Some pretty boy wearing the world’s ugliest coat. 

"Yeah?” Dean sneers, angry with all the things he remembers, all the things he _doesn’t_ , “Thanks for that."

Bullets did nothing, so Dean stabs him. The tax accountant pulls the knife out like a splinter.

Bobby gets two fingers to the forehead and collapses like his strings have been cut. 

"We need to talk, Dean. Alone."

  
  


***

His name is Castiel and he’s an angel of the Lord.

Even as Dean says, “Get the hell outta here; there’s no such thing,” something fundamental inside him _knows._ Recalls the carnage in hell as an invisible force laid siege to the place. 

No, not invisible - just to Dean’s eyes. 

“This is your problem, Dean. You have no faith.”

Dean has faith all right. Faith in what he can _hear_ , _see-_ -

Fuck. Those wings. Shadowed on the barn wall, no longer dripping with demon blood. 

Holy…

  
_Cas_.


End file.
